Dark Souls II - Interview @ VG 24/7

If you read this site often youíll know Iím nuts about Dark Souls. I blog about it often. Like, a lot. I even got an Ornstein and Smough tattoo after completing it, but even Iíve become curious as to just how From Software is going to advance its perfect storm of mechanics and design philosophies in a way that appeases die-hard fans. I donít envy the studio right now.

Of course, there was the power-keg of criticism that erupted as soon as co-directors Tomohiro Shibuya and Yui Tanimura said Dark Souls 2 was more ďunderstandableĒ than its predecessors. The fact is these guys arenít stupid, and thereís no way this game will coddle players explicitly throughout the experience. To do that would be to scrap the superb blend of challenge, risk and gratification that forms the seriesí heart.

I recently had a chat with Namco Bandaiís Takeshi Miyazoe about this very issue and I wanted to first touch upon the notion of ambiguity in the series. After all, each ĎSoulsí title has left world lore and the motivation of their cast largely to the playerís imagination, whereas other games seek to spell out the fine details in plain sight. All we know at this point of Dark Souls 2 is that the main player is cursed, so sets off into the world in search of a cure.

The game does not have to coddle players to ease the experience. Everything the game makes hard is a wiki or youtube video away from being cakewalk. I imagine there are very few who complete the game or tie together as much story as presented without dipping in to the collective wisdom of the internet.

The only thing the punitive gameplay and vague story accomplishes is locking in a large part of the fanbase to the above mechanisms. You can spend longer redying and just completely missing story arcs by just playing it in the dark.